In Forbes, Joe Thorndike reviews and comments on political scientist Andrea Louise Campbell‘s important new book, Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes.
Why do Americans support progressivity in the abstract but dislike concrete progressive taxes such as the income and estate taxes? Possible factors include self-interest, partisanship, the overuse of tax expenditures, and racial attitudes. More below the fold.
Joseph Thorndike, Why Do Americans Ignore Their Self-Interest When It Comes to Taxes?, Forbes (Feb. 2, 2026) (reprinted from Tax Notes):
Americans are broadly (if not uniquely) hostile to taxes . . . .
[T]he real puzzle of American fiscal politics concerns the nonrich. It makes sense that people burdened most by progressive taxes would fight hardest to eliminate them. But why do other people support anti-progressive reforms, like a rollback in estate taxes or reductions in corporate tax rates? . . .
By making the tax system more complicated and less transparent, tax expenditures make it hard for people to understand their material stake in many tax policy discussions. They also depend on a generalized hostility to taxes . . . .
[Finally,] although Black and Hispanic Americans tend to support a larger role for government and higher government spending, they have negative attitudes toward taxation—more negative, in fact, than the views held by many white Americans.
None of this bodes well for the U.S. tax system. . . .
Other related coverage:
- Carey Mott, Ways and Means, L.A. Rev. Books (Aug. 10, 2025) (reviewing Campbell, Taxation and Resentment, and Ruth Braunstein, My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America)
